A summer treat

Okay, after yesterday’s incredibly silly and pointless barcode post (I’m not even giving you a link, it was so dumb), I’ve gotta come back from that. Even if it IS Friday.

I made lasagna for dinner tonight, and we normally don’t have dessert on Friday nights. (The kids eat enough junk on Shabbat to last the week.) But I was remembering a job I had once working with kids in residential treatment, where the cook was particularly innovative when it came to devising nutritious treats. One such treat was the following:

Frozen Banana Pops (serves 6)

6 bananas

Fruit-flavored yogurt (strawberry or raspberry are nice)

popsicle sticks

Chopped nuts or grated coconut, optional

Peel bananas and place them on a foil-covered cookie sheet. Insert a popsicle stick in the bottom end of each banana, embedding half the stick. Pour yogurt into a wide bowl and hold banana carefully over it, spooning yogurt over the banana to cover it completely. (If topping with nuts, sprinkle nuts over both sides of yogurt-covered banana now.) Lay bananas parallel (“spoonwise”) on cookie sheet and place in the freezer for a few hours, until completely frozen. Serve, or cover tightly once frozen to serve within the next few days.

Here are a couple of trouble-shooting tips, too.

1. If yogurt is very thin (i.e. watery), stretch a dishtowel over a glass bowl and secure it with a rubber band. Pour the yogurt over the surface of the towel (making a well as needed to accommodate quantity of yogurt) and refrigerate. The fluid should drain over the next few hours, making the yogurt a thicker consistency.

2. If bananas are extremely long, cut in half and insert popsicle stick into the cut end.

3. Google “frozen bananas” and check out the images that come up. It seems there are lots of other ways to serve frozen banana desserts (parve ones too). An excellent summer Shabbat dessert.

These are a delicious, refreshing summer treat, and should keep the kids out of the lollipops and “pope-ices” (Israeli for push-pops) for a while.